Jan 27 How I Made 5 Floral Arrangements for $8.50 and Tips on Working with Fresh Flowers.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to show people how they can decorate their home, with their style, on the cheap, without looking cheap. The last couple of articles were about customizing your home with spray paint. You can read about that here and here. Today I am going to show you how I made 5 floral arrangements to add some much needed spring to our house for a grand whopping total of $8.50. You can so easily transfer this information if you are planning a big event like a wedding and you are on a tight budget.

Two things before we get started:

You must find a cheap place to buy flowers. At this point you are probably like "oh great, thanks for the advice." Here's the thing, do you have a farmer's market? If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania have you ever passed a Produce Junction? They sell flowers there. That is where I got mine. I wanted to make a point for this article so I did not buy a single bouquet that cost more than $2.50 each. Most areas in the country have a vegetable/fruit market where you can buy directly from the farmer, like Produce Junction, and most of these places sell flowers. Find this place. In the alternative, did you know that you can buy flowers wholesale? Find out where you local flower wholesale distribution center is. This will be particularly helpful if you are planning for a big event like a wedding or a retirement party.

Be creative with your vessels, i.e. you don't need a ton of vases. Use a pitcher, use old wine bottles, use a wine carafe. You get the idea. On that note though, here is my next plug for your farmer's market or flower wholesale center - a lot of them will actually sell vases for dirt cheap. The huge vase I am using in the photos below was purchased last summer at my farmer's market for $3.50.

Here are the flowers that I bought this morning. A sink full for $8.50. When I bring home a bunch of flowers like this, I usually let them soak in the sink for a couple of hours before I put them in a vase. I simply remove any rubber bands and packaging and set them in a bowl full of water in the sink. I think it helps the flowers last a bit longer and it also buys you some time if you aren't ready to style them right away.

I don't normally like mixing flowers in my vases. It is the one thing that I am sort of a minimalist about, I think it looks classy to have a vase full of one type of flower. But, I wanted to show you guys how you can make an arrangement on a tight budget so I picked a few different beauties. I wanted a bright spring feel so I went with some pom-poms that had beautiful watercolor shading ($2.00 per bouquet), a bouquet of hypercium (the white berries - I LOVE these - $2.00 for the bouquet) and a bouquet of those fluffy green leaves that I will call velveteen rabbit lettuce because I don't know what they are called ($2.50 for a giant handful).

These are the vessels that I selected from around our house.

First thing I did was add a bit of sugar to each vase. Just a shake or two will do (more in the larger ones).

Next, I started adding the first few flowers to each vase. You want to cut off the end of each stem at a bias. How much you cut off will depend on the height of your vase and how you want your arrangement to look. When I have a single-type flower arrangement, I tend to like them to peak out just above the vase in a very gathered, rounded way. For these arrangements, I wanted to give the flowers a bit more height.

I began with the pom-poms because they were the main flowers for the arrangements and I wanted to make sure that I distributed my supply in a way that made sense for the vases that I chose. I always remove the leaves from the stems that will not be above the mouth of the vase. This is how you get a cleaner more professional look for your arrangements.

At this point, I add the water. I like to add enough so there is at least a few inches at the bottom of each vase.

After I added the water, I began to add the velveteen rabbit lettuce to fill in the arrangements.

I saved the hypercium for last because that is really my favorite and I kind of fluff the arrangements and place the hypercium stems in so they are showcased a bit.

So here are the arrangements right after they were done.

Since I was putting these together to show you guys how it can be done on the cheap and to add some springy life to our house as opposed to for some event, the next step was placing them around the house! The best part, really.

$8.50. My guess is that you've spent that much on one bouquet at the grocery store before. I know that I have, before I knew the way. I really hope that you guys took something from this article that you will apply in your own life/home! I'd love to hear from you or see photos of the arrangements that you put together.

Thank you for stopping by and remember you can follow me on Instagram and Pinterest and that you can read me on the Apple News format. Until the next time!

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